The National

I Am Easy to Find is the title of the eighth album by the critically acclaimed and commercially successful American indie rock band The National.

A short 27-minute film of the same name directed by indie feature director and graphic designer Mike Mills, starring Academy Award-winning actor Alicia Vikander, arrived with the record. Using rearrangements of songs from the album as the soundtrack, the black-and-white work tells a woman’s story from childhood to passing, touching on those moments in a life that define it.

Anyone familiar with the band’s sound and, particularly, singer Matt Berninger’s imagistic and emotional lyricism, won’t find it surprising that they are making movies. The group’s music is immediately cinematic and increasingly artsy. Its expansive orchestrations and Berninger’s rounded baritone provide the soundtrack to the film, which includes subtitles. It’s a beautifully moving work from a band with two decades of documenting human frailty and subdued rage in increasingly complex albums.

I Am Easy to Find takes all the group’s past achievements and ups the ante considerably. Where past records put Berninger’s voice at the centre of everything, he is matched equally by a different featured female vocalist on most of the songs.

The cast includes heavyweights such as Ireland’s Lisa Hannigan, French folky Mina Tindle (Pauline de Lassus), This Is the Kit’s Kate Stables, Sharon Van Etten and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus on the show-stopping Dust Swirls in Strange Light. One of the standout performances in an album loaded with them is longtime David Bowie bassist and backing singer Gail Ann Dorsey, who slays on the opening track You Had Your Soul With You. It begins what winds up being something of a 16-song conversation that comes to you from some very abstract starting points.

Bassist, multi-instrumentalist Scott Devendorf said the members haven’t forgotten how to write straight-ahead songs or being able to define them. He vehemently disagrees with any suggestion that the more experimental side projects he, Berninger, guitarist Aaron Dessner, guitarist Bryce David Dessner and drummer Bryan Devendorf are involved in have bled into The National’s music.

“We’re pretty aware of what a straight-ahead song is. We write a lot of them,” said Devendorf. “Songs with words being pushed along with choruses, verses, poetry and structure or a piano ballad or two. But this time, working with Mike Mills on the album, he was very encouraging about us working outside of our comfort levels, and that’s where we went.”

No, this in no way means that I Am Easy to Find is a “difficult” record or bound to be filed further back in the future listening pile than something like 2010’s breakout High Violet. It’s the sound of a band going where they wanted with confidence and hitting the marks. Plus, for all its lush orchestration, it’s not so complicated that it can’t be delivered live. Developing the new tour strategy did involve some “market research.”

“Starting back in April, we did five preview shows where we would show the film, have a short Q&A and then play as much of the record as we could in the time frame,” he said. “We only did it from start to end in New York because that was when we had the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, who don’t tour.”

From there, the band worked out ideas for the coming tour and Devendorf said it’s been great.

“Yes, the songs were constructed in such a way as to be playable, but are very vocal,” he said. “Fortunately, our friends who joined us in the recording have been able to join us for the additional instrumentation. And we have been able to have two or three of our friends who recorded with us — Lisa Hannigan, Pauline De Lassus, Kate Stable, Gail Ann Dorsey — present for one or more of the shows and scheduling so that everyone is always overlapping. It’s mainly been Kate and Pauline, but everyone has their own projects going too, so it needs to be flexible.”

The bassist admits it would be impossible to present the music on the new album without at least one additional singer and additional musicians. But that has been the case going back a few albums now, and The National can certainly work with it. The band also manages to keep making music and touring with two pairs of siblings in the same band. One need only look back at The Kinks, Oasis and others to know that family can sometimes be the worst combination for group longevity.

The National play Deer Lake Park in Burnaby on Aug. 28.Graham MacIndoe /
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“Definitely, the influence of all of those side projects is always there when we get together,” he said. “We will all be finding new things through those experiments and bringing them into the room when we are working again, and it keeps it fresh and interesting and launches new ideas. Even if some of them don’t work out, sometimes the exercise can be really important and liberating, too.”

As to whether the Dessners or the Devendorfs are the Gallagher Brothers in the band, Scott laughs heartily.

“Oh, I really have to say neither. No one fights at that level like those guys, not even close. We can’t live up to that level,” he said. “I’m actually fascinated by the Gallaghers after watching Supersonic. I never really followed them when they were happening aside from knowing some of those big hits, but after watching the show I had better understanding of why they are always in the news.”

Perhaps its because Oasis is all swagger and Mancunian aggression, while The National is all shuffle and Midwestern apologism. This is a band that gets itself pumped up to go on stage blasting Johnny Mathis’s A Great Night for Crying as they walk on. Clearly, this is not a band aiming for arena chants and sing-alongs.

“We’ve been alternating between that and a Richard Reed Perry song from one of his Quiet River of Dust albums,” said Devendorf. “I never remember the title of the song, but it’s been really good matched with the Mathis, which was Matt’s find. Both of those kind of cleanse the palate of any other contemporary music before we embark on what we’re going to do, and it’s a pretty funny message to send too.”

Aaron is the “set list master” when the band hits the road. Devendorf says that with this many albums behind them, The National finds it needs to take in people’s expectations of “hearing the hits, if we really have any.” But not really being a singles band at all, he said they just decided to put together about five different takes on the set list and “put in those songs that people really want to hear, but just didn’t know that they did.”

As to whether The National Netflix series is coming after I Am Easy To Find, there are no plans. After the long tour winds down, he and brother Bryan will hit the studio for another LNZNDRF recording and all the other members will be working on various things too. While that happens, new music for The National’s next album will naturally emerge.

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